You can never have too much sky. You can fall asleep under the sky and wake up drunk again. When you are sad, the sky will comfort you. But when you are sad, there is not enough sky, butterflies, flowers, or most beautiful things. So, we take what we can and enjoy it.

---002---

I see my growth, I see the warmth in the trivialities, the quietness under the noise, the growth, the innocence.

---003---

Happiness to me should be like a pointy, shining star. The sharp corners are not polished, so if you accidentally touch the corners of the star, you will be hurt. But it is precisely because of the pain that the meaning of life can be reflected.

---004---

I want to be a wave in the sea, a cloud in the wind, but I am still just a little me. One day I will jump out of my body, I will shake the sky, like a hundred violins.

---005---

It is just a house as quiet as snow, a space where one can return, as clean as the paper on which a poem has not been written.

---006---

When you are sad, the sky will comfort you. But when you are sad, the sky is not enough.

---007---

Then she never forgave him. She spent her life staring out the window, as many women do, with her elbows propped up in sorrow. I wonder if she accepted her fate, if she was sad that she couldn't be who she wanted to be. Esperanza. I inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place at the window.

---008---

One day I will pack the bags of books and papers into my bag, one day I will say goodbye to the mangoes, one day I will leave and friends and neighbors will say, what happened to Esperanza, why did she go there with so many books and papers, why did she go so far, they don't know, I leave to come back, for those I left behind, for those who can't walk out.

---009---

My mother's hair was like tiny rosettes and candy rings, all so curly and pretty because she put curlers in them all day long.

Put your nose in and smell it. When she holds you, you feel so safe and the smell is so sweet. It's the warm smell of bread waiting to be baked, the fragrance of her body temperature when she gives you a corner of the quilt. You sleep next to her, it's raining outside, and Daddy is snoring. Oh, snoring, rain. And Mommy's hair smells like bread.

---010---

Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem.

---011---

Their power is a secret. They spread their fierce roots underground. They grow up and they grow down, gripping the earth with their hairy toes and biting the sky with their fierce teeth, their fury never slackening. This is how they persist.

---012---

They don't know that I left to come back. For those I left behind. For those who couldn't get out so easily.

---013---

Ma Lin, dancing alone under the streetlight. Singing the same song somewhere, I know. She is waiting for a car to stop, for a star to fall, for someone to change her life.

---014---

There is not enough of most beautiful things. So we take what we can and enjoy it.

---015---

I'm too strong for her to keep me forever. One day I'll be gone.

---016---

Apples, peaches, pumpkins.

You're in love and so am ah-ay.

Apple peach pumpkin pie,

You are in love, I am also here~

---017---

You sleep next to her and it's raining outside and Daddy is snoring. Oh, the snoring, the rain, and Mommy's hair that smells like bread.

---018---

You can never have too much sky. You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when you are sad. Here there is too much sadness and not enough sky. Butterflies too are few and so are flowers and most things that are beautiful.Still, we take that what we can get and make the best of.

---019---

They will not know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out.

---020---

/Wish/I want to be a wave in the sea, a cloud in the wind, but I am still just my little self.

---021---

I'm tired of staring at things I can't have.

---022---

The only reason for the existence of these four trees is because they exist.

---023---

Those who live in the mountains, sleeping so close to the stars, forget about us who live on the ground. They don't even look down, except to experience the contentment of living in the mountains. Last week's garbage, the fear of rats, these are nothing to them. When night comes, nothing disturbs their dreams except the wind.

---024---

I guess diseases have no eyes. Their tangled fingers will pick on anyone, anyone.

---025---

The cracked little wooden door had locked the darkness inside for so long. Now it opened with a sigh, and let out a damp, moldy smell, like a book that had been left outside in the rain.

---026---

If you give me five dollars, I will be your friend forever. That's what the little one tells me.

---027---

Those who have no life always like to interfere with those who live their own way.

---028---

Okay, I will be your friend.

But only till next Tuesday.

That's when we move away.

---029---

Now that she has come after me, she is my responsibility.

---030---

I lived in many houses, experienced many relationships, used many typewriters, but I never found what I really wanted. I just knew that I was creating, I would have my own money, I would have my own house, and that was my motivation.

---031---

You will like me more when you see me less. Every noon my chair is empty. You will cry and ask where is my beloved girl? And when I finally go home at three o'clock, you will appreciate me more.

---032---

Your twenties are a difficult decade for any woman, but I think it was even more difficult for me.

We cannot allow ourselves to become mediocre, even excellence is not enough. We do not have that luxury, and our best weapon in adversity is excellence.

---033---

I have a theory that a person's most attractive trait is also their fatal weakness; the things you like about someone are often also their worst flaws.

---034---

I went home that night and realized that my education had been a lie—a false assumption about what was "normal," what was American, what values ​​were. I wanted to drop out immediately, but I didn't. Instead, I went crazy with emotion. I was angry, and when anger turns into action instead of violence, it is powerful and powerful. I asked myself what I could write that my classmates couldn't. I couldn't know exactly what I wanted, but my feelings told me what I didn't want. I didn't want to be like my classmates. I didn't want to imitate the writers I read, whose voices worked for them but not for me.

Instead, I looked for the "ugliest" subjects I could find, the most unpoetic language, slang, the conversations of waitresses or children talking about their lives. I tried my best to write the kind of shocking book that would never be heard of in a library or school, the kind that even my professors couldn't write.

---035---

A house is the lifeboat of life, it keeps you afloat when the storm sweeps everything away.

---036---

I have managed to do many things in my life that I was not supposed to be able to do. And, many other people thought I was incapable of doing them. Especially because I am a woman, Latina, and the only daughter in a family of six sons. My father had always wanted to see me married. In our culture, men and women do not leave their father's house until they are married. I stepped out of my father's doorstep for no reason, a woman's house, with no one coming for her and no one telling her to leave.

---037---

One day I will have my own house, but I will not forget who I am and where I came from. The wanderers passing by will ask, "Can I come in?" I will take them to the attic and invite them to stay, because I know what it feels like to have no house.

---038---

It has been my lifelong dream to have a house. To have it is to have a space that you can call your own, a place to retreat and settle down, where the radio and television are not humming, and no one is knocking on the door, saying, "Don't stay there all the time!" For me, a house is a space where I can be sad when I want to, where I can turn off the lights when I want to, and sleep until noon or longer; I can turn off the ringing of the phone and read a book on a ruffled pillow; I can wear pajamas all day; I can stay within the backyard fence as long as I like. Having a house gives me the right to not have to do my hair, walk around barefoot, and be casual. I don't want to "mingle with everyone", which is a terrible syndrome for women. I like informal politeness. If someone rings the doorbell, does it mean I have to answer the door? If someone says "hello, how are you", do I have to smile like a geisha?

---039---

I am forty years old. As I complained, I can still make do with living alone. In fact, I love my work. I am healthiest and happiest when I am working. I don't know much about my grandmothers. I don't know who they are or what they do. But I know that my mission is to build their lives, or recreate them, as the case may be. Give them a name, interpret the fears in their lives, the mistakes and regrets they have had, the dreams and secrets, the shame, lies, glory and power. Perhaps it is a blessing that I don't know them. After all, I am not bound by this and I can fully control my imagination. I like to think, I am creating reality. I am listening to the voices that no one has heard. After many years, I record their lives on paper? As a woman, such writing is a kind of resistance, an action to refuse to be forgotten, a war against being drowned and despised.